SCHOOL OF LAW

Colloquium on Law, History & the Humanities

About the Colloquium

The Colloquium on Law, History & the Humanities offers an opportunity for faculty and students in law, the humanities, and the social sciences to read and discuss cutting-edge interdisciplinary work by scholars from the United States and abroad.

The subject for Spring 2008 is “Neo-liberalism: from above and from below.” We start from the widely shared view that the revival of classical liberalism during the last two decades of the twentieth century has proved epoch-making, producing policies, institutions, and social conditions—privatization; deregulation; the contraction of the state and the expansion of market and contract relations across social domains; the curbing of organized labor and the liberation of finance—whose forms and effects have differed in different nations and parts of the globe but whose general sway has been profound. Topics include: Neoliberal Paradigms and their Critics; The Global South: Pathways of Social and Economic Development; Varieties of and Alternatives to Neoliberalism in Particular Policy Domains; Ethnographies of Life Under Neoliberalism.

The colloquium will be organized around research papers by six scholars, who will visit campus to discuss their work. Meetings will occur bi-weekly and will be intensive two hour discussions with the papers' authors. Faculty and student participants in the colloquium will have access to the paper by each visiting scholar two weeks before the scholar's visit. Participants should read the papers in advance, since the two hours will be devoted to discussion. (A link to the papers is found at the top of this page.)

During the weeks between visits, graduate and law student who are taking the colloquium for course credit will meet in seminar with Professors Forbath and Carton to examine and develop lines of question and response to the paper submitted by the next week's visitor.

Meetings will take place from 3:30 pm – 5:30 pm on the date indicated in the Sheffield Room, Townes Hall (TNH 2.111).

Schedule and Links to Papers

Jan 28 Monday	James K. Galbraith LBJ School of Public Affairs UT at Austin “How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too” Note: This meeting will take place in the Sheffield Room, TNH 2.111
Feb 18 Monday	Kerry Rittich University of Toronto "Socializing Neoliberalism: The Fate of Social Rights" "Social Rights and Social Policy: Transformations on the International Landscape" "The Future of Law and Development: Second-Generation Reforms and the Incorporation of the Social" OPTIONAL READING
March 3 Monday	David Harvey Dept of Anthropology City University of New York "From Capital Surplus to Accumulation by Dispossession"
March 24 Monday	Jonathan Simon School of Law UC, Berkeley “War on! Why a ‘War on Cancer’ should replace our ‘War on Crime’ (and Terror)”
April 7 Monday	Michael Conroy Colibri Consulting Certification for Sustainable Development "How civil society is striking back at neoliberal globalization: Tales from the 'certification revolution'"
April 21 Monday	Jean Comaroff Dept of Anthropology University of Chicago "NATIONS WITH/OUT BORDERS: neoliberalism and the problem of belonging in Africa, and beyond"